Comma, comma, comma, chameleon

First full week of Pat’s chemo and she’s holding up well. She has been on steroids — they finished yesterday — and now we can see a downturn. Hopefully she’ll stay strong, certainly until we see the specialist on Monday for a review. We both know what to expect as the days go by, so it’s now a case of being careful with her and making her as comfortable as we can. We went along to a wig makers in Chichester during the week. Spent half an hour or so talking about wigs. Pat will be trying some on in a couple of weeks’ time and will make a decision then. I could do with one myself, come to think of it. Well, maybe not.

I finished the edit of my WIP and I’m now working through it, making the changes I need. Trouble is, I sometimes come across a red question mark that means nothing to me, and have to spend time puzzling out what I wanted to do. It hasn’t happened that often, I’m pleased to say. So far I’m about one third of the way through the book. Once that’s done, I’ll need to put some polish on to the presentation: things like editing the header with the title, choose a chapter heading style and include a table of contents. One other element of getting it right as far as I’m concerned, is making sure the text is justified. I don’t like to see eBooks that follow a growing trend to left justify the text. I would also like to know who came up with the idea in the first place and why? I still can’t make up my mind about asking for beta readers though. I know there are probably half a dozen of my subscribers who would read the book for me, but I need the whole thing ready for publishing before the end of August. Just something else for me to think about.

My Facebook campaign is having a reasonable success thus far. This month I have shifted sixty copies of the book I’m advertising: The Boy from Berlin. I have also started selling a few on the other on-line stores like Kobo, B&N and Apple. This is through D2D. I have sold a few of my other titles as well, so I’m looking at about eighty sales by the end of July. Once the campaign is finished, I expect a trickle effect before the sales dry up. Then I may consider advertising another of my titles before going back to this one. That will not be until after Stuart Bache has redesigned the jacket. And really, I need him to do this so I can get it into Amazon eBook competition before the end of August. The cost of my campaign is higher than the return I’m getting, but I look at that as being worthwhile until I can get the hang of advertising successfully.

As a member of Mark Dawson’s SPF group, I received an email from him talking about where he came from as an Indie writer six years ago to where he is now. He asked us what lessons we’ve learned from our experience that would be of use to others starting out on their indie journey. Well, I began my indie journey probably a year before Mark, so it’s obvious he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. But the single most important lesson I learned was never to blame your editor, proof-reader, copy editor or whatever you want to call them for any mistakes in the finished book. I started my indie journey by allowing a colleague in Australia to format my book, North Slope, for Kindle. I gave away 40,000 copies in a promotion and later discovered there were no commas in the book! I had to accept the blame because, as the author, I had to be the last person to see the book before it went off to the printers. Or in that case, to Amazon KDP. Mea Culpa. Hopefully I’m well past those kind of massive errors, and my next book will be perfect. Wish me luck.

On the up!

The week began with a trip to the Fernhurst Centre at St. Richards hospital where Pat had an hour’s consultation with the haematologist. He explained, in detail, what cancer they’d found: it was a lymphoma as they suspected, but one that is difficult to find. I can’t pronounce the name of the lymphoma, but it isn’t curable although they can treat it. This means that Pat will have this permanently but the disease will be contained with proper management. But finally we know where we’re going. Pat starts her chemo on Monday and has been on steroids all week. She’s like a different woman, full of beans, cooking, washing — just like the Pat I married. She comes off the steroids today, but has had a good week. And all this was a blessing because on Wednesday, my false hip decided to play up and left me half crippled, in a lot of pain and having to use a walking stick. The doctor has put me on codemol and I’ll be getting an X-ray later this month. This has happened before, and I know it will get back to normal, but I could have done without it.

On to brighter things now; in particular my Facebook campaign. I made a couple of tweaks to both ads (UK & USA), and have seen my sales increase. Yesterday I sold eight books. All told this month, that’s six days, I’ve sold 24 copies of The Boy from Berlin. At this rate I could hope to make most of my advertising costs back. And this is where I get nervous, believe it or not; how do I maintain this exponential growth in sales? The ads have eleven days to run, but I’ve yet to know what kind of ROI will be returned. Not that I’m concerned about that at the moment; I just want to know what it is that I’m doing right. I won’t be running the campaign once the closing date has been reached; I want to wait until Stuart Bache has come up with a new jacket for me. I was in touch with him earlier this week and he said it will be later this month before he can get started. Once that’s done, I’ll dive into another FB campaign

I am also working through my WIP, wielding the red pen. This is something Pat used to do for me, but she doesn’t feel she could do it justice, so I’m doing it myself. I think the word count will probably run out to about 62,000, which for me is quite short; I usually manage about 85,000 words. I expect (hope) to have the book ready well before the end of August when Amazon’s Kindle storyteller competition closes. It’s open to everyone of course. I don’t expect to win the competition, but I can’t see the point in not trying, particularly as I will have my unpublished book ready to go. I will probably contact a few of my subscribers and ask them to read it for me, but I need to have it ready for them, although not with a jacket; it will just be the Word file or something.

Looking ahead, I can see things will be fraught for a while because of Pat’s chemo, which will go on until the end of the year. We are both hoping she’ll be fit and well by January 19th. when we celebrate our diamond wedding anniversary. Probably go up to London and stay in a posh hotel. Maybe I will have sold thousands of books by then and will be in a position to afford the best. Wish me luck!

It's Good News Week

As this week and this month comes to an end, I can say it’s finishing on good news. The hospital has finally diagnosed Pat’s cancer and we will be seeing the haematologist on Monday afternoon for the consultation and the beginning of Pat’s treatment. Yesterday when we got the news, we were both in a flood of tears, cuddling each other with big smiles on our faces. It’s ironic that when we are supposed to be in despair at the news of cancer, for us it was a massive relief to know the treatment can begin after waiting for almost eight months. It’s going to be a hard road for Pat, but with faith and prayer, and the skill of the doctors, I know Pat will come though.

As readers of my blog will know, I have been advertising my book, The Boy from Berlin on Facebook. The two ads are identical, but one has been running for two weeks in UK, the other for a week in USA. In that time I have sold 39 copies of the book on KDP, and two on D2D. This represents a terrific turn round in my monthly averages: whereas I’ve been selling about one book a week, I can hope to see that figure rise to an average of ten copies each week. Naturally I will be tweaking my ads because it’s good advice to do so. I won’t make drastic changes, but as the numbers slow down, so I’ll look to maybe change my target audience. Needs some thought though. And next month (July), Stuart Bache is contracted to design a new jacket for me. It will be interesting to see how that impacts on the sales. I had one comment posted on my FB page from someone I don’t know. He put the jacket up and said, “Brill read”. Great stuff.

The next bit of good news is that I finally managed to type “The End” on my WIP. I never thought I’d get there with all that we’ve been going through this year. It’s taken me the best part of twelve months to get this far and it’s a relief to reach the end. Naturally the book isn’t ready yet, but I will be printing it off and going through it with my red pen. Once I’m happy with that, I’ll start the process of publishing. I can’t afford to ask Stuart Bache to do the jacket, but I’ll look into finding some designer recommended by people I know.

And the other bit of good news is that photo at the start of this blog. That’s me at our local ‘Fun Day’ on the green in our residential park home estate. Last year I sold six books and was well pleased. This year I sold nineteen books! At least, I think it was nineteen. I started losing count after twelve. I was staggered. One woman bought two books and while I was signing them, she picked up another and said her son would love that book. I reached the stage where I thought I might have to nip home for more books. So, a really good day. Next on the horizon is Pat’s treatment, my editing and a look at how I can tweak my FB ads and increase my sales. Wish me luck!